PRIMEVIL - *

Directed by Roel Reiné. Starring Emily Foxler, Nick Mennell, Lance Henriksen. Horror, USA, 100 mins. 15.

Released on DVD (£12.99) by Revolver Entertainment on 21st March 2011.

Five friends – on their way to meet an important, prospective business partner – are shipwrecked on a remote island. While waiting to be rescued, they realise they are not alone.

Tom (Mennell) and Chris are – rather anachronistically – dotcom entrepreneurs, looking to set up a music business website. Rather than fly to meet a big-cheese possible investor, they decide to take a boat, along with Tom’s girlfriend Anna (Foxler), a fat, rich man and the fat, rich man’s trophy girlfriend. They come across an injured man, floating the sea, who – after being rescued and given a warm bed – decides to monkey around with their navigation equipment. Cue wrecking on rocks, castaways washed ashore on a deserted island, and the bonehead stranger cresting the surf as a bloody corpse.

Needless to say, they’re not alone on the island. Something hirsute and ape-like rustles in the trees. Tom needs time to think (!), so he wanders off into the jungle, only to get swiped. The others set off to look for him, and are terrorised by the hairy buggers…oh, and also by a crack team – led by stern-faced Gallo (Henriksen) – sent by the Vatican to wipe out any evidence that supports evolution.

If the above wasn’t ridiculous enough, bear in mind that this film is so unoriginal it has to be seen to be believed. A quick check on IMDB shows the film is a remake of a 2008 masterpiece called The Forgotten Ones (starring the same fat fella as above). But it’s not this that makes it derivative, rather it’s the look and feel lifted straight from PREDATOR (whose working title was – incidentally – Primevil): the characters looking up at rustling branches, heat-vision-enabled beasties, and cover-your-skin-to-avoid-detection motifs are lifted directly from that Eighties classic. Other scenes are direct rip-offs from THE DESCENT, which – along with the ridiculous plot – leave a really sour taste.

David Bennett.

GORE IN THE STORE
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5 STAR FAB - 1 STAR RUBBISH